Considered it too, but I tend to think that such a game wouldn't be received very well. I mean, I'd play it, but intuitively I think it'd present significant challenges that'd make it less immersive and less grabby for most people.

Also, 2D assets aren't exactly easier for "media heavy" games--RPGs/SRPGs among them. Getting my current project to a place where I'd be able to say "look, Kickstarter, it's basically done, just give me money to finish the art assets" is probably going to cost me $20K out-of-pocket. And then you get into porting to multiple platforms (because you're going to need coverage to make up the cost of it), and you just found yourself in hell.

That sucks about Sam Fisher/Mike Ironside. It was already a bit jarring in Conviction as he's getting older sounding by the minute, but still. Bad year for Men of Subterfuge voice actors. Snake, Ocelot, almost Agent 47, and now Sam.

The most annoying thing is that my room is right next to the living room, so when I unplug it, it turns on my PS3, and afaik, means that if I want to plug it back in, I have to walk out and turn the PS3 back off so that the controller disconnects from it.

Yeah, I haven't figured out how to stop that yet, either. It's not that big of a deal, though, since the only times I do disconnect it from the PC is when I want to play on the PS3 instead.

There's something odd about the DS3 waking the PS3 up, anyway. If I shut down the PC, turn off the PSU and have both the DS3 and my phone dock plugged in, then it will wake up the PS3, as well - but only if all these conditions are met. It's really weird

Possibly the only voice actor that still voices his best known character is Peter Cullen on Optimus Prime. Incidentally, Michael Ironsides voices Ultra Magnus on the new Prime series.

I wish they'd put Ultra Magnus in the next game. I'll buy that lickety-split.

Frank Welker still does Megatron's voice (and Soundwave, in that one time he speaks) in the new Prime series as well. Of course, he does an actual menacing Megatron voice, rather than the screeching voice he did in the original Transformers cartoon.

I found the voiceovers and relatively long wait until the action to be grating. It felt like the developers missed Action Game Intros 101 - Dive in the goddamn action. Here I am, itching to perform combos, and you've got Annoying Cutesy Sidekick and Long-Winded Talking Sword going on and on...

But to the game's credit, the action, when it eventually began, was satisfying enough to excite me again. 100-hit combos right out the door? Yes, thanks. It's the addictive sort of combat that makes you want to try different moves and increase your score, and it's accessible enough for not-so-skilled players like me.

I found the voiceovers and relatively long wait until the action to be grating. It felt like the developers missed Action Game Intros 101 - Dive in the goddamn action. Here I am, itching to perform combos, and you've got Annoying Cutesy Sidekick and Long-Winded Talking Sword going on and on...

But to the game's credit, the action, when it eventually began, was satisfying enough to excite me again. 100-hit combos right out the door? Yes, thanks. It's the addictive sort of combat that makes you want to try different moves and increase your score, and it's accessible enough for not-so-skilled players like me.

Not much else I can add...it was only 27 minutes after all.

Agreed on the intro. I played for a couple hours and the quest system they build is alright but really the action is phenominal. I'm dying for a double jump though.

I found the voiceovers and relatively long wait until the action to be grating. It felt like the developers missed Action Game Intros 101 - Dive in the goddamn action. Here I am, itching to perform combos, and you've got Annoying Cutesy Sidekick and Long-Winded Talking Sword going on and on...

But to the game's credit, the action, when it eventually began, was satisfying enough to excite me again. 100-hit combos right out the door? Yes, thanks. It's the addictive sort of combat that makes you want to try different moves and increase your score, and it's accessible enough for not-so-skilled players like me.

Not much else I can add...it was only 27 minutes after all.

Agreed on the intro. I played for a couple hours and the quest system they build is alright but really the action is phenominal. I'm dying for a double jump though.

Agreed on the intro. I played for a couple hours and the quest system they build is alright but really the action is phenominal. I'm dying for a double jump though.

You'll get it eventually, of course.

I enjoyed my time with Dust, but the combat never gets any more difficult/complex, regardless of difficulty level. You'll be using the same exact techniques on the end-game rush and the final boss as you did on the very first boss and the enemies before him. There's a fair amount of Metroidvania exploration elements (getting a slide/wall-climb/double-jump/colored-key ability and revisiting areas for items), a bit of item crafting and some basic platforming to round out the package, but the game doesn't really change much from the first hour to the last hour. It is pretty relaxing, though, as you can pretty much just turn off your brain and watch the pretty colors.

It is pretty relaxing, though, as you can pretty much just turn off your brain and watch the pretty colors.

I was going to use the term "abnegation" somewhere in my first response, but thought against it since I was only half-hour in. Still, that's the feeling I get from it...it's a great turn-your-brain-off title.

Decided to reinstall Fallout 3 (GOTY edition) again and see if the issues I had that made it unplayable in the past have been fixed, either by patches or my change in hardware. Any absolutely essential mods required?

I never used any mods on Fallout 3 or New Vegas. I guess I got pretty lucky in the lack of game-killing errors. They've been out for quite a while now. Hopefully most of the big bugs have been squashed.

Decided to reinstall Fallout 3 (GOTY edition) again and see if the issues I had that made it unplayable in the past have been fixed, either by patches or my change in hardware. Any absolutely essential mods required?

The unofficial patch, plus I think there's a similar patch somewhere for each DLC. You might also want some of the other top mods from Fallout Nexus, although annoyingly you have to register there. IIRC there's also an .INI tweak for multicore CPUs you might need.

1. Get helicopter (I had one after one of the missions)2. Stumble upon military base, steal fighter jet3. Ram fighter jet into oil silo, find new helicopter with guns4. Take out all fighter jets before they can launch5. Helicopter comes to take out my helicopter, jump out of mine, grapple hook and steal that helicopter

I finally started playing Just Cause 2 a little bit the other day, and was delighted that my idea of pulling down a statue by connecting it to a Humvee and driving around in circles like a two-ton tetherball actually worked! This game is my go-to lately for when the weight of the world is bringing my mood down.

Also, 2D assets aren't exactly easier for "media heavy" games--RPGs/SRPGs among them. Getting my current project to a place where I'd be able to say "look, Kickstarter, it's basically done, just give me money to finish the art assets" is probably going to cost me $20K out-of-pocket. And then you get into porting to multiple platforms (because you're going to need coverage to make up the cost of it), and you just found yourself in hell.

I didn't mean to imply it'd be easy, it was just what the conversation led me to think of. I get the art thing, almost every game I've thought about doing eventually comes back to "but I can't draw worth shit and I'm not willing to pay a competent artist for my own hobby".

Also the part where I'm horribly lazy and spend most of my free time playing games with no will to be productive.

Causing mayhem for the sake of causing mayhem. I'm having trouble getting into Saints Row 3 as well.

The early game can be slow going in terms of money and upgrading. I think the DLC stuff actually hurts it, too much power too quickly, should be a toggle for it. I'd stick with story missions till it gets its hooks in, there really are some great scenarios and comedy in the game.

I'm eager to play more Super Meat Boy now, but I'm also thinking about starting up Mark of the Ninja or They Bleed Pixels. I'm fairly sure Mark of the Ninja is great, but I'm worried that I might be bored with They Bleed Pixels. Anyone have experience in that one? I'm mostly talking about playing it after going through Meat Boy, which is so fast paced and slick. The controls are great, if you die it's an instant respawn... Those are things I'm worried about with Pixels.

Well, I'll find out when I get home of course, just wondering if anyone had a comment on it. It's already installed and ready to go.

The Swapper is a gorgeous-looking game. Sure, you can tell from the screenshots, but the actual game in high resolution looks even better. This is indie AAA. Gameplay is very good, and the only complaint I have is that WASD moving-jumping-dragging is clunky (and there is no gamepad support at the moment).

An Arsian whose name escapes me (because he changes it to silly things on Steam fairly regularly) recommended that I get Rogue Legacy when it first came out a few weeks back. I picked it up on the Steam Sale last night, and spent a few hours playing it.

It really scratches the Castlevania itch in a way that few games do, and the Traits are amusing. I don't know if I'll stick with it long enough to beat the whole game (I haven't even been able to beat a boss, yet, but I'm working on it), but I know that I'm getting my money's worth out of it.

I'm eager to play more Super Meat Boy now, but I'm also thinking about starting up Mark of the Ninja or They Bleed Pixels. I'm fairly sure Mark of the Ninja is great, but I'm worried that I might be bored with They Bleed Pixels. Anyone have experience in that one? I'm mostly talking about playing it after going through Meat Boy, which is so fast paced and slick. The controls are great, if you die it's an instant respawn... Those are things I'm worried about with Pixels.

Well, I'll find out when I get home of course, just wondering if anyone had a comment on it. It's already installed and ready to go.

The control feels funny in TBP, but give it a bit of time (hitting attack while moving is different than attack while not moving, in a very unnatural way). But it has a pretty quick "die, rinse, repeat" cycle like Super Meat Boy, but the levels are much longer, but the frustration is solved by the "drop your own checkpoint" mechanic, which is what TBP is really all about.

It's very like SMB in that it's balls hard, but let's you keep trying and trying in short bursts.

Interesting, thanks for the info. I picked it up a sale or two ago, but I don't really remember seeing much info on it. Sounds like it has more complexity than Meat Boy. Not sure if that's a good thing. I can barely handle the controls I've got in SMB. It takes some pretty precise movements to pull off wall jumps in between rotating blades. I can only play for short bursts before I get a little burnt out. I'm usually laughing maniacally the whole way, until one or two good attempts at a really tough level fail on something dumb, then I gotta quit for the night.

Also, 2D assets aren't exactly easier for "media heavy" games--RPGs/SRPGs among them. Getting my current project to a place where I'd be able to say "look, Kickstarter, it's basically done, just give me money to finish the art assets" is probably going to cost me $20K out-of-pocket. And then you get into porting to multiple platforms (because you're going to need coverage to make up the cost of it), and you just found yourself in hell.

I didn't mean to imply it'd be easy, it was just what the conversation led me to think of. I get the art thing, almost every game I've thought about doing eventually comes back to "but I can't draw worth shit and I'm not willing to pay a competent artist for my own hobby".

I will say this: if this one makes any money, that game is my next target.

Causing mayhem for the sake of causing mayhem. I'm having trouble getting into Saints Row 3 as well.

I have the same problem with it. I'm not really a fan of GTA games pre-GTA4 and to some extent pre-San Andreas when they decided to do a lot of contextualization...it just didn't work so well in San Andreas. I mean, maybe I've gotten old or whatever, but I don't enjoy glorifying this stuff. It's not the violence, it's the pointlessness of it.

I don't really agree. I thought the storyline was very easy to follow and I only paused so that it wouldn't end too soon. There was so much to do, and yeah - it was all insane but I didn't think it was glorifying anything but bananas. I always ran out of patience with GTA games, I never finished one. This kept my attention.